Lourdes tries to "be reborn" after the two years of pandemic that have brought the Marian shrine to its knees and the town that thrives on religious tourism.

After a 2020 marked by lockdown and a 2021 with arrivals lower than the past figures - there were up to six million pilgrims a year - now we are preparing for a new welcoming season. Which will see the start of pilgrimages, celebrations and Marian processions with Holy Week.

A breath of fresh air, therefore, for a sanctuary that has 200 employees to which another hundred are added in the summer season.

"No one has been fired," said those in charge of the sanctuary. But the restart of the pilgrimages will give breath to all those tourist activities, from hotels to souvenir shops, from restaurants to guided tours, which they had to first suspend and then see their activity slowed down with the decrease in the arrival of pilgrims due to the Covid.

And to attract new faithful, the musical “Bernadette de Lourdes” also returns, which had not been staged since 2019.

Sold out for the first time at the Espace Robert Hossein which has 1,500 seats plus 150 spaces to accommodate wheelchairs for the disabled.

The show, which will also arrive in Italy in 2023, was born from the historical documents linked to the Marian apparitions, from the interrogations at the seer's police station to the letters exchanged with the family.

(Unioneonline / vl)

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